Experimental Studies on the Link between Promotion of Creative Ideas and Gender Discrimination

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Marina Schröder
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456592273

The aim of this project is to contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms leading to an underrepresentation of women in innovation and to evaluate the effectiveness of affirmative action interventions aiming at reducing this underrepresentation. Previous research explaining gender differences in career success has mainly focused on gender differences in behavior or on discrimination. In this project, we want to bring these two strings of research together by studying whether gender differences in behavior induce gender discrimination. Specifically, the project studies gender differences in the promotion of own creative ideas and links these to gender discrimination in support received in the innovation process. To do so, we are going to conduct a set of real-effort experiments where both female and male participants have to work on a creative task and are incentivized to promote the resulting creative idea to a third party. We are going to evaluate whether there are gender differences in the promotion of creative ideas and whether these differences lead to gender discrimination in support received. Further, we want to analyze the effect of different means of affirmative action on both the promotion of creative ideas and the allocation of support. The insights from the proposed projects will provide an important contribution to the research on diversity and innovation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants